What is translanguaging for English-dominant students and singletons [the only speakers of their language in the class]?

Abstract

This presentation illustrates how English-dominant students and classroom linguistic minorities translanguaged in an officially English-medium 9th grade Language Arts class in Honolulu. Of the 14 students, 8 were Ilokano L1/HL speakers (including 5 Ilokano-dominant newcomers and 3 English-dominant old-timers), 3 were recently arrived Chuukese L1 speakers, and there were 3 singletons, the only speakers of their L1/HL in the class (1 recently arrived Samoan L1 speaker, 1 Marshallese HL speaker born in Hawai’i, and 1 Cantonese HL speaker who had lived in Hawai’i since age 5). Over a year-long linguistic ethnography, I examined similarities and differences in the translanguaging of linguistic majorities, minorities, singletons, newcomers, and old-timers. Since it was an English-medium class, allowance of translanguaging with no deliberate translanguaging pedagogy primarily benefited newcomers in the ethnolinguistic majority (Ilokano L1 newcomers). Linguistic minorities and English-dominant students who spoke various languages as HLs also benefited from translanguaging, but their translanguaging practices were qualitatively and quantitatively different due to the different affordances of their languages in the classroom ecology. Since all students translanguaged only when activities, models, and discourses (1) engaged their particular ways of translanguaging, given the distribution of resources in their language repertoires, and (2) offered them positive identity positions as L1, L2, or HL speakers of classroom majority, minority, or singleton languages, findings show how more deliberate intervention is needed to bring out translanguaging dispositions and practices in English-dominant students and linguistic minorities.